Page 11 of Sweeter

“Marley…”

I flash him a smile. “I swear on the soundandthe fury we’re going to be good for each other. See you at eight.”

Chapter 4

Will

The woman behind the counter waves her plastic tongs in my face. “Was that last one sour cherry or huckleberry?”

I smother a yawn and point at the purple-topped doughnuts. “Whatever those are, please.”

“Huckleberry.” She picks up a glossy pastry and places it lovingly beside my eleven other choices. “Coffee? Milk?”

“A coffee, please.” My sentence warps as I give another yawn. I didn’t getanysleep last night, just paced the house strung out on Marley Ellis.

Marley Ellis. Her name is like an incantation. Rabbits vanish, flowers appear. My mind goes to sex and stays there until I do something about it. Fifteen-year-olds would be embarrassed by the amount of jacking off I did last night. My saving grace is I didn’t Google her and jack off to the search results. I’ve known her less than twelve hours, but I’ve never had it so fucking bad. I feel so scattered, I could swear I drove to Granny’s doughnut shop on clouds, watching grassy snow falling into the sky. Marley Ellis. The artist. The almost sugar baby. The girl who wants me to be happy instead of laid.

“Here you go.” The saleswoman hands me a takeaway cup. “Thirty dollars.”

I pay and gesture to a nearby bench. “Okay if I stay?”

“Go ahead, not like we’re busy.” She eyes me up like my old baseball coach. “I can’t remember the last time someone your age was in this early.”

“I know you guys sell out fast and I wanted a full dozen.”

That gets me a smile. “Breakfast meeting?”

“Sort of. I’m going to see a girl I like. She’s giving me clay throwing lessons.”

Her smile gets bigger. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I say, and the dam bursts. “Her name’s Marley and she’s an artist at Blue Lodge. She doesn’t think we should start something, but I’m hoping she changes her mind.”

The saleswoman shrugs, but her brown eyes are twinkling. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Eventually.”

The bell over the door rings as a tall guy strides in. The saleswoman moves away, taking her wisdom with her. I look out the window, watching the snow swirling past in a lace veil. Is Marley awake or is she curled up in bed, hugging a pillow and thinking of me? My cock throbs despite the workout I gave it last night. I bite back a groan. I can’t go to Marley’s studio with sex on the brain or I’ll come across like a sleazy asshole. I need to focus on something else. Changing Marley’s mind about me would be a good place to start. I resisted Googling last night, but unless there’s some seriously wild shit in her search results, I’m not going to run off and fap in a bakery restroom. I pull out my phone and search Marley’s name.

The first thing that comes up is her website. I click through and my heart jumps into my mouth. She’s looking right at me, smiling as she molds something at a workbench. Her curls are wild and her lips bright magenta. I stare at the picture until my eyes burn. I don’t want to blink in case she disappears. That silky, mischievous quality comes across even in 2D. That sense she can’t be held where she doesn’t want to be. When the picture is burned into my memory, I scroll down.

Marley Ellis is a Portland native who specializes in handcrafted jewelry and ceramics. Her work is inspired by the strange beauty of human nature. She uses a wide range of materials, including vintage fabrics, porcelain, plastic, and animal bone to capture what it means to be alive.

I smile. I can’t imagine how you communicate human nature in a necklace or a cup, but I like the way it sounds. My finger hovers over the portfolio link. I’m sure her work doesn’t suck, but I don’t know what I’ll do if it does. The page loads, but it’s blank, the images too high-resolution to appear instantaneously. I swig my coffee, anxiety mounting. Felix once dragged me to an art exhibition where all the paintings were made from crushed prescription pills. What if Marley’s art is as bad as that? The first image loads; a thick copper choker with red stones. Relief floods me. It’s nice, a bit indie but— something about the necklace demands another look. The metal isn’t copper, it’s rusty iron and the stones are red cloth, pushed through the metal like velvet bubbles. I scroll down.

This necklace was made for Sienna Nikolaev, in loving tribute to her wife, Zoya Nikolaev. It was hand forged from Zoya’s gardening spade and a dress she brought to America in 1973 while fleeing sexual persecution in her home country, the USSR. Sienna asked the artist, “How can I be brave now my heart has gone?” This necklace is her humble answer.

There’s a strange ache in my chest, but I don’t know what to do with it, so I scroll down the page. There are teacups shaped like seashells and silver necklaces decorated with candy-coloured buttons and bleached white bone. I pause on a strange, three-handled mug and read it was made for a mother whose conjoined twins died at birth. I put down my phone. My heart is pounding, my breath feels like it’s coming in through a straw. After months of feeling like a houseplant, this is an emotional overdose. I’m proud and miserable and shocked and devastated, but most of all, I’m angry.

Marley is broke. She makes necklaces out of Soviet Union shovels and comforts the mothers of dead babies, but she might have to stop making art so she can serve assholes like me eleven-dollar tacos. How is that fair?

It isn’t. But it won’t stay that way. I exit Marley’s website and call my accountant. It’s early in LA, but Chuck answers after the second ring. “What can I do for you, Will?”

Heart pounding, I tell him what I want. Chuck doesn’t ask questions. He’s got enough tech guys on his books that the requests stopped being strange a long time ago.

“It’s done,” he says. “Should come through in the next few hours.”

“Thanks.”

Chuck hangs up and I let out a shaky breath. I know I’m rich and I’ll probably be that way for the rest of my life, but it’s still bizarre to discuss huge amounts of money like it’s a tip on a pizza delivery. Yet I don’t feel guilty the way I usually do when I call Chuck. Maybe because I’m not buying a new car or some big present my parents don’t want. This is a positive contribution to the world. Thanks to me, Marley Ellis is going to keep making people’s hearts explode. In a good way.

---